Christopher Hitchens

Several times, reading the comments beneath an online article about religion, I've come upon remarks along the lines of: "Really? A magic being in the sky?" Terry Eagleton, in "Reason, Faith, and Revolution," refers to this pseudo-critique as the Yeti theory of belief in God: The idea that what the religious believe in is some sort of entity in the world for whose existence we have dubious evidence at best. In a review of Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion," Eagleton puts it this way: [Dawkins] seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions...

Related "Christopher Hitchens" Articles

Several times, reading the comments beneath an online article about religion, I've come upon remarks along the lines of: "Really? A magic being in the sky?" Terry Eagleton, in "Reason, Faith, and Revolution," refers to this...

HARDCOVER FICTION1. "A Wanted Man" by Lee Child (Delacorte, $28). Jack Reacher finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy after hitching a ride with strangers. Last week: —2. "The Time Keeper" by Mitch Albom (Hyperion, $24.99). Father...

So, I counted.I own 78 books that I have yet to read. In a typical year, I read between 60 and 70 books, so we're looking at a good 13-month backlog if I were to not buy a single book until I cleared it, which isn't going to happen because I buy new books...

Not even Martin Amis’ worst enemies — and the British novelist has plenty of them, judging from the polarized and occasionally splenetic reaction to his latest outing, “Lionel Asbo: State of England” — would ever accuse him of being a neo-Victorian....

In an anecdote that sticks to the memory like an overdone cookie on an undergreased cookie sheet — those 2011 holiday baking mishaps still rankle — an American visiting the Sorbonne is accosted by a French student.
"You Americans!" the...

Christopher Hitchens' writings on politics and his public face on TV programs and in other forums have earned him manifold tags, not always favorable ones — he's been called a provocateur, a contrarian, a ranter, a polemicist and a traitor. But the...

It's tempting, looking at the fall's books, to think of this as a political season. Dick Cheney got it started with "In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir," and in November we'll see a different (and perhaps conflicting?) take when...

Eugene D. Genovese became one of the most notorious radical intellectuals in the country in 1965 when he addressed an all-night teach-in at Rutgers University on the Vietnam War."I do not fear or regret the impending Viet Cong victory. I welcome...

Gore Vidal was impossible to categorize, which was exactly the way he liked it. The reading public knew him as a literary juggernaut who wrote 25 novels —from the historical "Lincoln" to the satirical "Myra Breckinridge" — and volumes...

Los Angeles TimesAlexander Cockburn, the radical and acerbic journalist who had written longtime columns in both the conservative Wall Street Journal and the leftist outlet the Nation, died Friday in Germany. He was 71.The influential writer had been...

Christopher Hitchens, the engaging and enraging British-American author and essayist whose polemical writings on religion, politics, war and other provocations established him as one of his generation's most robust public intellectuals, has died. He was...

Through his Vanity Fair essays, his books and his television appearances, Christopher Hitchens has become one of our leading provocateurs, saying what many of us might be thinking (though he's more articulate) but are afraid to utter. Public intellectual,...

I WAS SITTING with President Jalal Talabani of Iraq earlier this month when Iraqi television was broadcasting the trial of Saddam Hussein. The hearings had shifted into their second phase, concerning the mass murder of Iraq's Kurdish minority in the...